Richard Williamson oversaw the mapping team at Apple as a Senior Director for iOS Platform Services. He was reportedly handed a pink slip after Cue became responsible for Maps during last month's management restructuring, according to anonymous sources speaking to Bloomberg.

Apple replaced Google as the data source for its Maps app in iOS 6 after it could not reach an agreement to license Google's vector mapping data and turn-by-turn navigation features. (This is despite the fact that Google incorporated the features into its mobile OS, Android.) Apple built its own data backend using data from Open Street Maps and Tom Tom, among other sources, as well as incorporating mapping and visualization technologies it acquired from Placebase, Poly9, and C3 Technologies.

The redesigned Maps include benefits such as turn-by-turn navigation with voice cues form Siri, three-dimensional "flyover" views of major cities, and more efficient data transmission and caching. However, Maps has been widely criticized for its lack of transit directions, missing points of interest, inaccurate search results, and driving directions that could lead users on a wild goose chase.

Meanwhile, rival Google is reportedly putting the "finishing touches" on its own Maps replacement, which would include turn-by-turn navigation and its own 3D map views.

Cue plans to replace Williamson as part of his efforts to make good on Cook's promise to do "everything we can to make Maps better." Former SVP of iOS Software Engineering Scott Forstall was also apparently asked to leave Apple in part after he declined to sign his name to Cook's apology over Maps. Forstall reportedly refused to accept responsibility for what he saw as a non-issue.

Cue is also said to be consulting with outside mapping experts and "prodding" Tom Tom to fix the data it licenses to Apple for navigation and landmark locations.

This isn't the first time Cue has been called in to fix others' mistakes. He originally served as a vice president in charge of Apple's iTunes Store but was asked to take over for the failing MobileMe cloud service that Apple launched in 2008 to coincide with the iPhone 3G. He was promoted to senior vice president in 2011 by Cook and charged with overseeing iCloud—MobileMe's replacement—along with iAd, the App Store, and iTunes. In the executive shakeup last month, Cue was also put in charge of both Maps and Siri.

Promoted Comments

I am not second-guessing the change by any means, but ugh… Maps is impressive, particularly in its presentation, despite its major flaws. To put so much together and have it work so well, only to be dismissed after it launches because it can't reliably perform its one essential task, must be crushing.

Impressive, as in impressively bad in its presentation.

The relative visual weights of elements and regions is horrendous. In particular, one-way-street indicators are entirely missing at various zoom levels and pretty much invisible at nearly all zoom levels. This is inexcusable and just one of the many signs that the project was mismanaged from the very top of the personnel hierarchy.

Media and users both tend to fixate on provable flaws such as incorrect or missing data. Lost to most is the subconscious realization that the map's visual design is horrible.

Hundreds of years of cartography thrown out the window and instead substituted with trendy sparse minimalism. Maps should be information dense without cognitively overloading the user. Rather than pursue useable data density, apple just discarded most of that utility. For instance, glancing at a map for 2 seconds should give a user a mental picture of the street grid or overall layout of the physical world. Due to the visual weighting of streets and other regions, Apple maps fail in this regard. For example, regular land is beige yet roads are outlined with a shade of gray of nearly identical intensity. Meanwhile parks are visually bold, with bright contrasted green visually out-weighing and blotting out everything else on the screen.

Yes, maps are bad. But amazingly, they're even worse than most people consciously realize.